Thoughts on social media, business and journalism from Suw and Kevin Charman-Anderson

Instant visualisation for bridge data in the US

I was looking for a way to map the connections to Strange Attractor, and I stumbled upon this visualisation tool from IBM called Many Eyes. A couple of clicks later, and I found this amazing visualisation looking at the status of bridges in the US, an interesting and dynamic way to look at data in the wake of the Minnesota bridge collapse. I’ve often thought that news organisations are missing a trick by not making greater use of data visualisation and rich information graphics. Give it a click. The graph dynamically changes as you roll over it. I also think it’s an interesting way to have people look for patterns in large sets of information, and I think graphics like this could be a great launching point for discussions. (Only one thing I might suggest to the folks at IBM, another go at their Blog This button. Maybe it’s just Ecto being a bit weird, but the formatting could be a little more straightforward.)